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Look up, New York!

Citizen Arts International co-founder Natalie Rine hopes that the organization’s inaugural event, the Citizen Arts International Festival, will make New Yorkers to look up. And not just because several of the festival’s performances take place far above the ground—although that does help. 

Force in “Suzik,” who will perform at New York's inaugural Citizen Arts International Festival. Photograph courtesy of the artists

 “We tend to look down at our phones, AirPods in,” Rine told Fjord Review during an interview. “By meeting New Yorkers in public spaces, some of it is a found audience. There will be passersby who don’t expect to see a contemporary circus act happening in front of them on their way home from work.” 

That performance could be “Suzik,” by the South Korean company Force, which is danced atop towering poles. It could be “Ukrainian Dreams,” a projection-based installation that will illuminate Cooper Square on the evenings of September 25 and 26.  

Or, the act that makes New Yorkers break free from their phones might be “From Sky to Earth,” a collaboration between French dance artist and former climber Antoine Le Menestrel and composer, saxophonist, and 2026 Guggenheim Fellow James Brandon Lewis. On the afternoon of September 12, Le Menestrel will turn the exterior walls of the Made Bush Terminal in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, into his stage.

“Antoine will be moving and dancing and climbing and James will be, in real time, responding to the movement.” Meg Araneo, another of the festival’s co-founders, says.“The buildings are also part of the project—the work comes out of the relationship of the artists to those buildings. So after they leave that space, that piece will be something else.” 

Antoine Le Menestrel of Compagnie Lézards Bleus in “Service à tous les étages.” Photograph by Augustin Le Gall

Antoine Le Menestrel of Compagnie Lézards Bleus in “Service à tous les étages.” Photograph by Augustin Le Gall

Citizen Arts International Festival is the flagship event from Citizen Arts International, a new arts organization based in New York City. Founded by a core team consisting of Rine, Araneo, and Elena Siyanko, the festival, which kicks off on September 7, will bring an eclectic variety of performance-based art from around the world to the city’s public spaces, free of charge.  

“It was really a response to the current moment where we are in New York City and a response to where we are in the performing arts,” says Siyanko. “The cost of attending performing arts, seeing an important international work, has become simply prohibitive. The idea was to present international productions to audiences who are overlooked by traditional presenters of the arts.”

The new festival also came from Siyanko’s ongoing frustration with the underutilization of New York City’s public spaces, and a belief that other country’s traditions could pave the way in this regard. She cites red tape associated with permitting and the privatization of public space as key barriers to doing this work in New York City. 

“This is our way of changing the dynamic of New York City,” she says of the festival. “Yes, it’s international, but it also brings the kind of work in outdoor arts that comes from countries that invest inordinate amounts of money into nurturing, defending, and tending to the public space.”

The Citizen Arts International Festival might sound familiar. In September 2025, the Down to Earth festival took over New York City’s public spaces with similar goals and inspirations. Rine and Araneo were both on the producing team of that festival, and Siyanko founded it alongside Frank Hentschker, the executive director of City University of New York’s Martin E. Segal Theatre Center, Down to Earth’s underwriting organization. Officially, Down to Earth is on pause, according to the festival’s website. 

“It was an immensely successful inaugural season, and this is the team that pulled it off,” Siyanko said during a joint interview with Rine and Araneo. “We realized that there was no longer funding available at the Segal Center to continue Down to Earth, so we had to find another formula.” This new formula also involves funding from CUNY, but this time it comes from the Graduate Center, an organization that Siyanko says is “more aligned with what this festival is meant to be.” 

Andrea and Ang in The Garden. Photograph courtesy of Citizen Arts International Festival

Andrea and Ang in The Garden. Photograph courtesy of Citizen Arts International Festival

Araneo emphasizes that Citizen Arts International is a new venture. “It’s a new iteration—it’s a new version of something that’s our own,” she says, later adding, “There are things that Down to Earth did that we definitely embraced and learned from, but we really are moving in a much more civic-minded direction. Citizen Arts International is really trying to embrace this idea that we are a city, we are part of a civic society, and we are really trying to build our projects around that concept.” 

One way Citizen Arts International does differ from Down to Earth lies in the fact that it hopes to offer year-round programming in service of its mission, in addition to continuing the festival on an annual basis. Up next, the organization is planning a symposium on the intersection of health, neurology, and art, to be presented in conjunction with the JanArtsNYC initiative next year. 

By making art free, public, and accessible, the founders of Citizen Arts International say they are in service of a much larger, more general mission: the pursuit and cultivation of joy. “As political, as socially aware, and committed as we all want to be, I think that sense of delight and joy is incredibly resonant, at least in many of the projects we’re presenting this season, ” Siyanko says. Araneo adds: “One of the phrases that has guided us is ‘Joy is a civic act.’” 

Sophie Bress

Sophie Bress is an arts and culture journalist and dance critic. She regularly contributes to Dance Magazine and Fjord Review, and has also written for the New York Times, NPR, Observer, Pointe, and more. 

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